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[Jay]

Ugh.
Yet another one of these threads.
IMPLEMENTING GRAPHICS IS NOT TRIVIAL WHATSOEVER.
I'm tired of all you complainers who can't live with the ASCII.
Do you not realize that that's all we had for quite some time?

@FPS argument: No.  The game's PROCESSING FPS (aka what you see in the FPS counter) is completely decoupled from the game's GRAPHICS FPS already.  If you're getting any sort of effect on the PFPS from the GFPS, you need a graphics card from this decade and/or to fix your init.txt GFPS cap.
I will concede that the current engine is not optimized, but with any sort of real graphics card, you couldn't tell anyway.

@Graphics engine overhaul: It's not going to happen until Pres. Arc.  A rewrite is by definition quite the opposite of trivial.  It would take way too much work for no benefits whatsoever until the rest of Presentation Arc came around anyway.

@Rest of you: There is PLENTY of better stuff for Toady to be implementing than your precious "graphics."
Learn to love the game the way it is, and let him work on important stuff first.
...Can you tell I'm a purist?  I absolutely abhor tilesets.  They just make the game look wrong (being a veteran of BEFORE TILESETS WERE IMPLEMENTED AT ALL and all...)

Truly, everything I've said here was already said.
Please guys, if Toady wants to implement it now, he will, and if he wants to wait until Presentation Arc as he's said he would numerous times, he will, regardless of our input on the subject.

[Duke 2.0]

Truly, everything I've said here was already said.

 But not so well put in one post.

 But yes, Toady will get to it when he wants to get to it. To those who cannot wait for better graphics: DF just ain't for you. Wait a couple of years and check back on DF. Perhaps then we will have it then.

 I smell a almost political division in the forum between people who want tilesets and people who like the vanilla game. I just hope we can avoid the real life-style fighting over such trivial matters.

[Sabin Stargem]

From what I am understanding here, the topic creator's request is to have Toady implement the structures that modders require to do their work better.  This isn't about forcing Dwarf Fortress to use a standardized tileset or anything like that, the goal is to make it so that bugs are minimized while allowing modders to change more things.  While it is true that it would take Toady some effort to do this, it would also open new doors for the graphical modders, who require a foundation to do their work.  The sooner the structure is in place, the more quickly these people can expand their tilesets with fewer flaws.


Furthermore, graphics are a part of gameplay.  To the ASCII grognards, the ASCII is a means of visualizing things in a customized way for themselves.  Unfortunately, most people desire to quickly assess and understand the events that occur in the game, and ASCII is reaching it's limits for showing this level of detail.  In the User Interface thread, someone mentioned that there were at least 9 different meanings for "C" in the game, which complicates the game.  By requiring players to learn ASCII while making symbols to take on multiple meanings is going to tax the abilities and patience of players.  This would hurt the game, which would harm the community.  Graphics packs like Mike Mayday's is going to be very helpful in off-setting these issues for future players. 

[Silverionmox]

Improving the graphics is not really a pressing matter - streamlining the interface would do more for new players. Regardlessly, it can't be that complicated just to expand the system that exists now:
- The existing curses*.bmp file is henceforth only used for text.
- Another *.bmp file in the same style, with 256*256 tiles in it instead of 16*16.
- Allow the player to assign any tile number (and any BG-FG-colors) to anything displayed on the screen (objects, creatures, indicators..): that's already half done.

That way, the modders can get started... but the size will make them stick to iconic, ascii-style tilesets anyway, so the focus of the game will stay on the gameplay.

[DJ]

IMPLEMENTING GRAPHICS IS NOT TRIVIAL WHATSOEVER.

Unless you have seen the source code, you can't really make such absolute statements. It could be trivially easy, or it could be something requiring a complete rewrite.

[Jreengus]

Zoal:
Ummm unless I am going crazy if you go on DFFD there is a mod which replace all those accented letters in names with normal letters. Infact a quick search revealed it. There ya go, fed up of "levers, trees, and shovels" in your dwarves names a simple soloution without Toady having to do extra work.

[Zoal]

thatguyyaknow,

There's more problems than just that.
I consistently get 1-casket-casket FPS.

[Jreengus]

I realize it isn't a complete soloution, but a partial soloution with no extra work on Toady's part can't be a bad think.

[Footkerchief]

- Allow the player to assign any tile number (and any BG-FG-colors) to anything displayed on the screen (objects, creatures, indicators..): that's already half done.

I suspect it's not anywhere near half done.

[Impaler[WrG]]

@Rest of you: There is PLENTY of better stuff for Toady to be implementing than your precious "graphics."

Thats your opinion which is clearly driven by your personal love of ASCII graphics and nothing more.  Toady clearly focuses on tasks/features that are requested most heavily and has said so on many occasions.  ASCII Grognards dominate this forum because this game is immediately rejected by most people who try it because of the ASCII graphics, difficult UI and a learning curve that more of a learning wall.  Addressing these issues would improve the game much much more then the addition of new game-play elements.  The two most recent improvements in the realm of presentation, greater then 80x25 screen and rectangle based construction orders were both vastly superior to any proposed 'new' features like armies that are currently being worked on because they made the game much more playable.

[Carcer]

If you people can bother to learn the intricacies of building magma traps, flood the world devices and such huge undertakings like building huge pyramids and towers, why can't you be bothered to learn the ASCII?

[Sabin Stargem]

Playing with Dwarf Fortress is fun, because it presents a combination of The Sims, Dungeon Keeper, and Civilization into one package.  However, learning how to do things won't be fun if the player can't readily perceive what is happening.  To the average person, memorizing and understanding ASCII isn't a game - it is a job.  First impressions are important for anything, be it videogames or books.

[Random832]

If you can't live with the 16x16 tile sprites, I don't know what to say.

I can live with the 16x16 tile sprites. I cannot live with 16x16 text; I cannot live with "DWARF F[pillar]RTRESS" (i.e. any number of places the typical graphical tileset encroaches on text). This is why I use ascii now. A hypothetical text tileset could also use a codepage like 850 or even 1252 instead of 437 - one in which every lowercase accented letter has an uppercase version.

[Random832]

Something else that might be nice, but which I can almost guarantee all of you are going to tell me is heresy - moving to a class-based system for assigning the letters (i.e. "dog" and "wolf" are both "c" for "canine") so that goats and goblins don't have the same letter.

[(name here)]

I fail to see how that is in any way better.